1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a fishing reel, and more particularly to a fishing reel including an anti-reverse mechanism having a stopper gear for restricting rotation of a take-up member for taking up a fishing line about a spool from a direction for feeding the fishing line and a stopper claw engageable with stopper teeth of the stopper gear.
2. Description of the Related Art
As disclosed in e.g. a Japanese laid-open utility model gazette No. 62-97570, in a fishing reel of double-bearing type or a spinning reel type, the stopper gear for preventing the rotation of the take-up member in the line feeding direction is mounted on a drive shaft for driving this take-up member. Whereas, the stopper claw engageable with the stopper teeth of the stopper gear is projectably attached to a reel body which rotatably supports the take-up member. In operation, when the take-up member is driven by rotation of a handle through the drive shaft in a forward direction for taking up the fishing line, the stopper claw is raised relative to the stopper gear to release this stopper gear thus allowing the forward rotation of the take-up member for taking up the line about the spool. On the other hand, when the take-up member is reversely rotated in a direction for feeding the fishing line by means of load acting on this line, the stopper claw comes into engagement with one of the stopper teeth of the stopper gear thereby restricting this reverse rotation of the take-up member.
However, with the conventional fishing reel, its anti-reverse mechanism consists essentially of a single stopper gear and a single stopper claw as described above. For this reason, a play amount of the take-up member, i.e. the distance between a point where the take-up member starts the reverse rotation and a further point where the member stops this reverse rotation through the engagement between the stopper claw and the tooth of the stopper gear, is maximum in case the stopper claw is positioned farthest from the stopper tooth. In this case, the maximum play stroke of the take-up member substantially equates with a pitch of the stopper teeth. Moreover, for assuring sufficient physical strength of the stopper teeth, it is preferred that the pitch of the stopper teeth having the above-described construction be as large as possible. In such case, the large teeth pitch results in further increase in the play amount of the take-up member.
The present invention attends to the above-described problem of the convention. Thus, the primary object of the invention is to provide a fishing reel with improvement which achieves reduction in the maximum play amount of the take-up member while allowing a sufficiently large pitch for the teeth of the stopper gear.